The teacher don't know about how to deal with the student body.
And the underclassmen are flashing hot and cool.
All your girlfriends care about the watch you wear and they're talkin' about it.
Believe it or not there's life after high school.
-- Hall & Oats, "Adult Education", Rock & Soul Part 1
WebProNews has an article about
managing corporate reputation through social media and real-time search. The crux of the article is this very true statement:
It's not just about listening for what others are saying though. If your business doesn't have some kind of presence of its own, it's going to be hard to counter any negative attention it may be receiving. If your business is not actively involved in the conversation, your reputation will be left up to what others say about it.
I made this point in a
prior post in this space a couple months ago, but I think the article veers off course in its recommendations for how to approach the issue.
Reputation can be though of as a hazy metric which is the average value of what every one else thinks of you. Direct interaction is arguably the strongest shaper of reputation. If someone doesn't know you directly, they might rely on the opinions of those they know who have interacted with you.
In the absence of that, there is the tug-of-war between what you say about yourself and what others have said. The net has amplified this last front because it provides a cheap, persistent, and accessible repository of collective information. Search becomes the arbiter of visibility for this information.
From my highly marketing unsavvy, yet over-analytical viewpoint, there are two ways you can deal with this last category...
The techniques described in the
WebProNews article fall under the rubric of what I call the High School Socialite approach. You work from the assumption that the pool of "others" is untrustworthy at best and hostile at worst. If you don't continuously watch your back, someone else will be all to happy to sneak up on your and provide you with a swift and merciless stabbing.
With the High School Socialite approach, you better be vigilant and be ready to play aggressive defense at a moment's notice, whether that be through direct rebuttal, drowning out the message, or using your weight to silence the critic.
At good example of this approach at its ugliest was described in the
Indianapolis Star a week or so ago, where there was an article detailing how some physicians, so worried about having their reputations being besmirched online, had started to
require that patients sign agreements not to criticize them online.
My beef with this approach is that it is reactionary, misses the point, and runs the risk of backfiring.
So what's the alternative? I like to think of it as the Karma approach. Rather than constantly obsessing about the threats to your reputation, you channel your energy into building and nurturing that reputation. It's a process that starts at the beginning rather than storming in at the end.
You start by taking a good hard look at what your business does... not what it
says it does, but what it
really does. "Making money" isn't a valid answer here because that is the result of what the business does. I'm talking about how you address the needs of customers. Are you helping them truly meet their goals? Chances are if you aren't, that's the first step toward an a disgruntled post or tweet. What are you doing or neglecting that undermines meeting needs?
What does meeting needs buy you aside from repeat customers? Think back to the strongest shaper of reputation: direct experience. These experiences usually wind up populating the pool of information that people turn to when they have nothing else to go by. When you neglect this, you might as well be placing a bulk order of bad marketing karma.
Now let's talk about what you can do to reinforce a good reputation. Doing things that increase the likelihood of others saying you're great is one thing, but what can you do on your own behalf?
Back in the old days, when it was easier to promote an image through a large scale advertising campaign, all you needed was slick PR. In a world where attention is fragmented and fleeting, that doesn't work too well anymore. In the reputation marketplace, a brand is nothing more than a shorthand for reputation. It is not a substitute for a good reputation.
A corporate blog can be an effective tool for reputation building, but your efforts can fall flat if you don't execute wisely.
Blog posts that read like press releases will not be viewed as credible, let alone useful. Continuously boasting about how great your company is won't do you much good, either. Think about your personal relationships... what do you make of people who constantly talk about themselves and their accomplishments. They don't make for good company, do they?
Focus instead on what you're doing to meet
customer needs. Give them sound advice about making good decisions about products or services you provide. How can they get the most from a what you do. Do this proactively, posting frequently. By doing this, you're building up good karma with the search engines both in terms of relevance and age.
So, is your marketing approach ready to graduate from high school?
